Wanted: Republican leaders on climate change: As I See It

We need Republican leadership on this issue, because without Republican support, there is little hope of passing any climate legislation

By Jon Clark

With the tragedy at the Boston Marathon at the forefront of the nightly news, the extreme weather disaster unfolding in the Midwest has received little attention. The Midwest has been on a see-saw ride of extreme drought to extreme flooding recently.

Only a few months ago, water levels on the Mississippi were so low that the Army Corps of Engineers was blowing up rocks on the river bottom to allow barge traffic to continue without scraping bottom. Now they are experiencing record flooding from what NBC News reported is “a result of last week's storms dumping a month's worth of rain in just a few hours.”

This comes a year after a record drought destroyed crops over much of the Midwest and 2 years after record flooding forced the Army Corps in 2011 to blow up levees and flood farmlands to alleviate pressure due to high water levels.

“The new normal in the coming decades is going to be more and more extreme flood-drought-flood cycles like we are seeing now in the Midwest, and this sort of weather whiplash is going to be an increasingly severe pain in the neck for society," according to meteorologist Jeff Masters.

Climate scientists have long been telling us that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. Scientists at climatecommunication.org explain our wild flood-drought swings: “A 4% increase in atmospheric moisture has been observed and that is consistent with a warming climate… The increased moisture in the atmosphere is driving the shift to heavier but less frequent rains.

While an atmosphere that holds more moisture has greater potential to produce heavier precipitation, precipitation events also become less frequent and shorter, as it takes longer to recharge the atmosphere with moisture. By analogy, a larger bucket holds and dumps more water, but takes longer to refill.”

Even with worsening extreme weather, some Republicans remain “skeptical” on the issue of climate change. To those individuals I would ask them to consider the following. A study by James Powell, who was a member of the National Science Board for 12 years, found that of the 13,950 peer-reviewed articles on climate change from 1991-2012, a total of 24 papers “reject human-caused global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.”

These 13,950 articles had a total of 33,690 authors while the number of authors of “skeptics” papers had a total of 34. This is the extent of the “debate” about the science. The number of scientists who say that we are causing climate change by burning fossil fuels would fill Harrisburg’s Metro Bank Park five times over; the number of scientists who disagree wouldn’t fill a bus to get to the game.

A majority of respondents (52 percent) believe climate change is happening, while 26 percent believe it is not, and 22 percent say they “don’t know.”

By a margin of two to one, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use.

Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents prefer clean energy as the basis of America’s energy future and say the benefits of clean energy, such as energy independence (66 percent), saving resources for our children and grandchildren (57%), and providing a better life for our children and grandchildren (56 percent) outweigh the costs, such as more government regulation (42 percent) or higher energy prices (31 percent).

Only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.

A majority of respondents say their elected representatives are unresponsive to their views about climate change.

There is a solution that Republicans can get behind. A revenue-neutral, steadily-rising carbon tax on carbon dioxide emissions with all of the revenue returned to every household is a free-market, conservative approach that will not grow the size of government and at the same time will shield our economy from the higher energy costs associated with a carbon tax. A carbon tax would send a clear price signal to the market that industries and consumers should be switching to carbon-free forms of energy.

Let’s be honest, we need Republican leadership on this issue, because without Republican support, there is little hope of passing any climate legislation in either the Senate or the House. Also, because physics dictates that climate change isn’t going to go away, it will worsen – dramatically, and future generations of Republicans will suffer the consequences of our inaction now.

Jon Clark is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator for Citizens Climate Lobby and lives in Dover.